Quote Originally Posted by Ajani
The end of Microsoft as the "software king" is a topic my brother (tech junkie) and I have been discussing and following for a few, probably around 2 , years... With the move towards smartphones and tablets and away from laptops and desktops, it does spell trouble for Microsoft... Considering that 1) Microsoft is far behind in the phone/tablet market 2) Android is basically taking Microsoft's approach of being available on just about any hardware, as seen in your 1st point (except that Android customers seem to be a lot happier with their OS than most of us are with Windows) 3) Though most persons use Windows on their home/work machines, only a relatively small group are really windows fans - many would switch if a good and affordable alternative was available - Apple being too expensive and Linux just not user friendly - but on smartphones and tablets; Apple is affordable and Android (Linux) is user friendly...

Microsoft is really going to need to reinvent themselves in order to be competitive in phones and tablets...
Yeah, a lot of the post mortems on CES have opined that the shifts occurring in the computing space are huge. I tend to concur. PCs will continue to have a large place in the market, but they no longer drive innovation and growth. They've become high volume commodities, with low margins. Not much different than low end appliances.

Tablets are not a new market, but with the iPad, they now comprise a rapidly growing segment. That's why the PC vendors are all jumping in as quickly as they can, even though the current version of Android is not built for tablets.

I totally hear you on Windows. I use a Windows PC at work, and an iMac at home. One computer I use because I have to, the other one I use because I want to. CEO Ballmer's still wedded to MS' 1990s "Windows Everywhere" strategy -- tie everything back to the desktop monopoly. It worked so long as the desktop PC dominated computing, and it did for the better part of a decade and a half. Ironically, this strategy is collapsing because they did not do enough to enable Windows to truly go everywhere.

With smartphones and tablets, MS is feeling the consequences of basically sitting on their laurels for much of the last decade. Slapped a resource intensive GUI that collapsed under its own weight (Vista) and subsequently released a cleaned up version that finally worked right (Windows 7). But, unlike with Apple's OS X and Linux, Windows is not well suited to scaling down for smaller devices. They did nothing to modernize Windows by making it scalable and less resource intensive.

That's why MS is scrambling to catch up with Windows Phone 7 and now with the just announced ARM-based Windows (which is still two years away at least, an eternity in the tech market). But, the problem is that those products are very late to market. Some of the MS lackeys in the tech press pointed out that Windows Phone 7 is further along than the original iPhone at introduction. Problem with this comparison is that the market is not comparing the new WP7 phones with the original iPhone. They're deciding between a feature-incomplete WP7 phone and the iPhone 4 (or 3GS).

Apple has had almost four years to build an entrenched ecosystem around the iOS devices. Consumers have already bought in. They have music, videos, apps, and accessories. All of the iOS devices can share all this. If you already own an iPod touch, and want to add an iPad. Just plug it in, and everything transfers over. This is what MS is fighting on both the phone and tablet fronts, and their desktop monopoly does nothing to lock consumers in with other computing devices.

Rumor is that Windows 8 will be radical break from previous versions. If they can create a truly scalable version of Windows, while supporting legacy PC applications with virtualization, then they might actually maintain their market position by actually innovating for a change.